More on topic here I transferred this message from another thread on LuLa. Given what I see in driver color management choices I find it hard to believe that Windows shrinks everything to sRGB at some point in the cm route.
There's no intention to go the printer color management route here with my HP Z3x00 printers. I am using Windows and Qimage Ultimate and its color management. The integrated calibration and profiling available on the printers + the default profile creators + the optional profile creators were satisfying so far for photography and already give a choice in profile tastes that can even be widened to more profile creators as the measuring data can also be exported as CGAT.
I am curious though on the choices within printer driver color management on OS-X and Windows. I understand that in OS-X and selecting Colorsync the printer driver will use the OEM ICC profile that corresponds with the chosen media preset, rendering choice is absent. The same ICC profile would be used in application color management for that paper if no custom profile exists. In the other choice it will use LUTs in the driver itself that correspond with the chosen media preset and no use of the Colorsync color engine then. Ctein used that last one.
In my HP Z Windows driver PCL3 choices I see a selection for Application Managed Colors and Printer Managed Colors, the last gives a choice for the Source Profile; sRGB or AdobeRGB, say the color space assigned to the image you want to load. There is no choice for the Windows color engine ICM-WCS or a vendor matching system there. I had no clue what it uses then. It is similar for the Postscript PS3 driver but the Source Profile choices goes up to 4 for RGB and includes way more CMYK color spaces. Both can be set in view of PS PDF documents with both RGB and CMYK aboard. I think the choices of source color spaces are defined by the printer language, PCL or PS, and the limitation in source profiles supported is set there. I can not imagine that they all are converted to sRGB before going into driver color management as Ctein and others suggest for Windows' printer color management. It is more likely the printer language that defines the transfer states.
In the Printing Preferences>Advanced Document Settings tab/menu of both the PCL3 and PS3 driver there are choices for Graphic>Image Color Management>ICM method: ICM disabled, ICM Handled by Host system (ED: Windows I guess), ICM Handled by Printer, and PS3 only; ICM Handled by Printer using printer calibration. There is also an ICM Intent range of choices; graphics, pictures, proof, match, for all the 4 ICM management choices. The default setting in the driver is ICM disabled. My guess is that this range of choices matches the two choices Ctein was confronted with when he went for Printer manages color; Colorsync or Epson Color matching. HP offers more choices though, at least in my Windows system. The ICM choices represented in this menu of the driver only come in action if the user selects Printer managed color on the other menu page, I can not interpret it otherwise. Not that HP explains that carefully and worse, the driver's defaults are Printer Manages Color + ICM disabled, which should result in no CM at all. In the beginning I had the impression that it only applied to documents like PDFs etc but meanwhile I learned it works for Printer manages color on all what is thrown at it.
It would be nice to get a better understanding of what happens under the hood with those choices and where the differences are between OEM drivers + their OS-X and Windows versions. Again, not to use that CM route for Tiffs etc but for an understanding of the method. For PDFs etc with known RGB + CMYK color spaces assigned the PS3 driver offers at least a kind of RIP CM route this way and I know it is used by Z users for that task.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htmDecember 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots